Hollow
by Traveler07
Summary: This is a story from George's POV about what happened at the end of the 7th book with Fred. Warning! This contains spoilers!


**Hello people! This is my first story for Harry Potter and I decided to write it in George's perspective. I wanted to write about how it must have felt to him when Fred died. It was actually really difficult for me to write for several reasons, firstly whenever I think about it/ read the 7th Harry Potter book I cry my eyes out, and secondly because when I actually think about the book I like to pretend that Fred didn't die. I know, it's silly but it just gets me every time. **

**I hope you people enjoy this! Sorry about any typos or grammar mistakes. **

**Disclaimer: I do not own the Harry Potter series, it is property of JK Rowling, a true literary mastermind. **

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George POV

My hands fell limply to my side as I stared down at myself lying on the floor.

I saw my red hair, my pale skin, my freckled face… and the ghost of a smile. Something that, even lately, I had been wearing a fair amount. I felt strangely detached, like I was a ghost hovering above the scene of my own murder. Nothing really connected me to this world, a strong breeze would send me away.

If only, if only.

Somehow I was on my knees now. I only knew because his face… my face, grew closer. I could see more now. I could always read Fred's eyes. We communicated like that a lot, it came in handy all those times we pulled pranks. We could always orchestrate it perfectly, and then we'd laugh at our cleverness.

Just as I could always read his eyes before I could read them now. Only, there was nothing to read. There was only blankness, only emptiness… just like me. Even in this we were the same, the emptiness… that strange hollowness. It should hurt right? I should be crying and screaming and cursing a Godless cruel world. So why wasn't I?

Out of the corner of my eye I could see mom. She was lying over his chest and shaking and sobbing. That was the picture of grief. That was what I should look like… what I should feel like.

Dad was standing over her… crying too. The whole family was crying, Ginny, Ron… even Percy. I couldn't truly feel anything, but in that moment a lingering echo of jealousy ran through me. I wish I could express what I was feeling… I wish I could feel anything at all. Instead I just knelt here feeling nothing, with nothing at all inside me. How much easier would it be if I could just cry?

I watched my hand come to rest on Fred's hair. I couldn't remember trying to move it, my body was acting on its own now… now that I no longer understood how to animate it. Another twin thing maybe; if he couldn't animate his body I couldn't animate mine. That sounded fair.

Fair.

What a stupid word. What a ridiculous myth. Magic, spells, werewolves, and unicorns are all real but not fairness. Fair doesn't exist in this world. Fair wasn't making all these kids, and that's what they were; just kids, fight against the worst evil in the world while their parents cowered and kept their heads down. Fair wasn't making Harry, Ron, and Hermione suffer the fate of the world on their shoulders. Fair wasn't trying as hard as you could, fighting with everything in you and losing anyway. Fair wasn't finally getting one brother back just to lose another. Fair wasn't knowing you had to live while the only thing you wanted was just to die.

Fair? No, but maybe I deserved it.

I didn't know. I didn't know when he died. I was still fighting, still laughing… _still living_. That seemed wrong somehow. Shouldn't I have known the instant he died? Shouldn't I have felt the second his soul left? We always did everything together, so shouldn't I have died when he died? I remembered what I had been doing before I saw him here and I felt sick to my stomach.

_**I was running down a corridor, my feet were pounding against the marble but I couldn't hear it in the din of the battle. My ears were still ringing from some sort of explosion that sounded like someone had taken out an entire section of the castle. I hoped no one was hurt. At the very end of the corridor there was a suit of armor leaning up against the corner. I ducked behind it and heard the Death Eater sprinting across the debris-ridden floor.**_

_**Just as he crossed my path I made the knight fly at him and take him tumbling down the stairs across from me. **_

"_**Have a nice knight!" I felt a grin split my face, if only Fred were here. There was no one around to appreciate the pun, what a shame. I should be writing this stuff down. **_

_**I jogged off down the hall. He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named had announced that he was going to pull back for an hour to give us time to send Harry to him and we needed to all meet up and figure out a plan. Preferably before Harry went out to die a noble death.**_

_**I snorted. I loved Harry like a brother but it was impossible to deny the fact that he had a self-sacrificing complex. He felt like he was born with the weight of the world on his shoulders. I shook my head and ignored the part of me that was inclined to agree with him.**_

_**I rounded another corner and saw my family all huddled in a circle. Even Percy was there. As much as I claimed to dislike the bugger I was glad to see him. After all, Fred and I needed someone to torment with new joke shop inventions. My grin widened as I closed the distance.**_

_**A hand. A hand stuck out of the circle of my family. Someone had died. I stopped dead not wanting to come any closer. I tried to prepare myself for what I was about to see.**_

How stupid. There was no preparation for what I had seen. You could never be ready for something like this. But I should have been expecting it. I should have known. I had been laughing while he was dying. Thinking about the jokes I'd tell him, the tricks we'd play on Percy once this was all over.

I knew, I knew from the beginning that defeating someone like He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named would require sacrifice… payment. I just never expected the price to be so high. I never expected that I would have to pay it all. I never expected that the payment would be Fred.

The urge to retch welled up again. It was the first thing I had felt since I had seen Fred lying on the floor… since I had seen myself lying on the floor. Somehow I wasn't relieved.

There must be something I could do. This couldn't be it. This couldn't be all. This couldn't be the end. I wouldn't let it be.

Fred deserved better than this. He deserved better than to be taken out by exploding debris. He hadn't even known, he hadn't even had a chance to fight. He had just been standing there, in the wrong place at the wrong time talking with Percy… laughing.

Then it all stopped.

The laughing, the talking, the smiling, the moving… the breathing… it all stopped. It all stopped dead.

_Stopped __**dead**_.

I felt something clawing at my chest and crawling up my throat before I couldn't hold it in any longer and it exploded out of me. And then I was laughing. I was laughing hysterically at some stupid pun. There wasn't any humor in me, nothing was funny at all. I couldn't feel anything before but now the pain was coming.

It was rushing into me and overflowing like trying to pour an ocean into a cup. There was no room for more agony, I was already filled with it so it kept pouring over and releasing itself. And I kept laughing and laughing. It ripped itself violently out of me before I could stop it, before I could even think of stopping it.

I distantly recognized that my family was staring at me with varying expressions of concern. I couldn't stop. I couldn't stop.

My vision went blurry and I realized that tears were pouring out of my eyes, little drops of the ocean of grief leaking through.

The laughing changed somehow, it took on a harsher quality. It morphed little by little until it wasn't laughter at all, it was sobbing. I was sobbing my guts out, so hard that my throat felt torn and I could feel bile churning uncomfortably inside of me. The sobs ripped out of me at such force that I almost couldn't draw breath. I almost couldn't breathe.

For a moment I though of how nice that would be. How great it would be if my heart just stopped beating. Then my body could die here on this broken marble floor, exactly where the rest of me did.

I didn't know how much time had passed. It must have been a long time, almost an hour. Because He-Who-Must…. Voldemort's voice was echoing around the halls again.

Harry was dead.

He had taken another brother from me. I hadn't known that it was possible but the pain intensified. It made me want to die. I felt like I was dying, like if I closed my eyes and lie down on the floor then I could go too. Then I could sleep and I wouldn't hurt so much anymore. Was that so bad? To want not to be hurting?

The feelings were changing again. I could feel them twist and contort inside me until my pain became rage and my lost quality became focus.

I would make him pay.

Voldemort had taken enough from me, from all of us and now it was time I took something from him. I didn't know what I could do, if anything, but I knew that I would try with every fiber that was left of me to take him down.

For Tonks and Lupin…. For Harry and for Fred.

For Fred…

Suddenly I was standing again.

I let my pain cover me like an armor before I marched out after the rest of my family towards the battlefield. I watched the backs of their heads, their bright hair that matched my shade perfectly reminding me that everything was not lost. I still had them. I still had my family. There was still something in this world left worth fighting for.

And fight I would.

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Let me know what you think of my first attempt.


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